North Kordofan, Sudan — Towns & Travel Guide

What is North Kordofan known for?

North Kordofan is the northernmost of the Kordofan states, with South Kordofan and West Kordofan on its southern side and North Darfur off the western boundary. Three states carry the Kordofan name. It sits among the 18 wilayat of Sudan and holds the border with Northern to the north and with Khartoum and White Nile to the east.

Where is North Kordofan?

North Kordofan holds the northern end of the Kordofan country, bordered by Northern above, by Khartoum and White Nile on the east, by South Kordofan and West Kordofan below and by North Darfur to the west. Six neighbours ring it. Every one of those boundaries is internal, shared with another of the 18 wilayat of Sudan rather than with a country outside.

El Obeid is the capital. The state lies in the tropical band north of the equator, and its area runs to the low hundreds of thousands of square kilometres. The record marks no hill and no watercourse inside it.

What the file does carry is a boundary list and a capital, which makes El Obeid the single named point inside a territory otherwise described only by the states around it. Northern closes the top of it. South Kordofan and West Kordofan take the southern side, so the three states sharing the Kordofan name divide the same block of country between them, with North Kordofan holding the part above the other two.

White Nile and Khartoum lie off the eastern edge, and North Darfur is the neighbour to the west, which sets the state between the Nile country and the Darfur states.

What is North Kordofan like?

Arabic is spoken across the state. The name Kordofan is shared three ways, carried by North Kordofan, South Kordofan and West Kordofan alike, so a reference to Kordofan on its own covers ground much wider than this one wilaya. El Obeid holds the state's public life.

The capital is the only place North Kordofan puts on record, which means everything the file attaches to the state, its administration, its seat and its name, gathers at that single point. Nothing built is entered here. What the record does not give is any built or observed thing: no institution stands against El Obeid, and no practice, gathering or site is attached to the state at large.

Its neighbours name themselves after direction. Northern, South Kordofan, West Kordofan and North Darfur all take a compass word into their names, and North Kordofan belongs to that same naming habit rather than carrying a word of its own. Khartoum and White Nile break the pattern.

Those two lie off the eastern boundary, and neither of them takes a compass word the way the state's other neighbours do.

What is the history of North Kordofan?

The state carries no dated entry. North Kordofan appears among the 18 wilayat of Sudan with El Obeid named as its capital, and the file attaches no year of creation to either the state or the town. Only the boundaries are documented.

Northern, Khartoum, White Nile, South Kordofan, West Kordofan and North Darfur stand as its neighbours in the record, and no earlier arrangement of those lines is given.

What is the climate of North Kordofan?

The tropics reach up this far. North Kordofan sits in the tropical band north of the equator, well inland, with Northern above it and no coast on any of its six boundaries. Nothing moderates it from the sea.

The state's weather comes off a continental interior shared with Khartoum, White Nile, South Kordofan, West Kordofan and North Darfur, and the file records no rainfall or seasonal figure of its own.

How do you get to North Kordofan?

Everything runs through El Obeid. The capital is the state's only named point, so an approach into North Kordofan is described by which boundary it crosses rather than by which town it reaches. Six edges, six ways in.

Arrivals come down from Northern, across from Khartoum or White Nile, up from South Kordofan or West Kordofan, or over the western line from North Darfur. Air and rail are absent from the register.